Cloaking, Good and Evil Explained
Intrigue and espionage play a role in Internet activity, including affiliate marketing.
It may not exactly be James Bond trying to get the goods on the the bad guy. (Although when I saw the movie “Casino Royale,” I couldn’t help but notice 007’s deftness with the laptop.) But, the world does have white-hatted good guys and black-hatted bad guys. Always has, always will. The Internet does nothing to change that. It merely provides another venue for the classic good-versus-evil struggle.
So what does that have to do with marketing?
Enter: cloaking. The dictionary definition is “to cover or hide with.” In the Internet context, cloaking prevents content or HTML code associated with a web page from being accessible to visitors. The term contains both bad and good connotations – sort of a double-edged sword.
Cloaking’s “evil” edge pertains to search engines. Those on “the dark side” can program their web server so that ordinary visitors see one kind of page content, but Google and other search engines receive entirely different content. These bad guys thus can distort search engine results to their advantage, lure unsuspecting web visitors into their traps, and take somebody else’s commission – possibly yours.
Cloaking techniques prevent Google from accurately providing legitimate search results. That’s why Google bans sites it catches using cloaking. If your marketing efforts involve Google, it’s best not to try this.
Now let’s focus on the “good” edge of the cloaking sword: link cloaking.
Take the affiliate links on your website. They contain your unique affiliate ID, given to you by the merchant and enabling you to be paid on sales emanating from them. But the resulting URL can be long and complicated.
Some customers will copy and paste only the first part of the URL into their browsers (leaving out your affiliate ID). Dishonorable affiliate marketers can substitute their ID for yours and receive credit for the product’s purchase. Either way, you lose commissions.
But cloaking script helps by disguising the affiliate link. It replaces the original URL with a redirected URL that is streamlined and protects your affiliate ID. Many merchants provide cloaked URLs as part of their affiliate arrangements. Some websites (including EHosting4U.com, recommended by Affiliate Classroom) offer free or low-cost link cloaking options.
Search engine cloaking is unmitigated deception. But link cloaking is simply an act of self-defense – protecting you and your hard-earned commissions from the clutches of the dark side.